Hy and Christopher and the show with an interview with Bill Hyland, his historian of St Bernard Parish on the https://www.losislenos.org/events We also talk about https://www.aspendailynews.com/news/one-of-the-last-great-newspapermen/article_3b0b4113-286f-4305-8172-ec076eba845b.html of the program, Curtis Robinson.
But our main conversation, as Christopher writes below, is What’s Next in the Iran War?
Many have criticized Donald Trump’s military bombing campaign in Iran, yet one strains to show sympathy for a regime which murdered thousands of its own people for simply asking for the right to free elections. It’s difficult to have empathy for a dictatorship so brutal that when a young adolescent is shot at a peaceful demonstration, and a firefighter picks him up to carry him to get medical aid, the firefighter is shot and killed by the Revolutionary Guard for the audacity of helping a wounded protester. No Westerner will shed tears for the demise Ayatollah Ali Khamenei or lament the destruction of the Iranian drone factories—which have outfitted the Russian military with endless amount of aerial death visited on innocent Ukrainian citizens—and which currently bomb civilian targets in Arab countries.
Even the most ardent critic of the exercise of US military force in Iran had trouble suppressing a sardonic laugh when news reports showed the bombed-out ruins of the building where the mullahs of Iran gathered to vote for a new supreme leader.  It was easy to chuckle when in headlines above the photo of destroyed shell of the building of the “assembly of experts” (that which remained after the explosion), the news caption read “white smoke, no leader.”   How does one not cheer at the death of a group of psychopaths who have driven thousands to their death through endless conflict and terrorism? Iran is run by a “12th Imam” death cult whose theological relationship to mainstream Islam is roughly analogous to that of a Bible-believing Baptist versus a member of the Ku Klux Klan.  Both claim to be Christians, but they share the sole similarity of staring at a cross on a regular basis— with much different purpose in mind. Few will shed a tear for an Ayatollah and government who actively tried to kill the President of the United States; moreover, degrading the remaining nuclear and military assets of Iran not only relieves an existential danger, but increases our ability to emasculate terrorist cells around the world. A limited aerial strike on Iran, which came after informing the Gang of Eight in Congress, is essentially the same action Barack Obama took during his presidency.  The question remains, though, what happens next?  How limited is this?
In point of fact, Operation Epic Fury started when it did, according to Axios, when Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called President Trump on Feb 23 with a stunning tip: Iran's supreme leader and his top advisers were all set to meet at one location in Tehran on February 28.  “They could all be killed in a single devastating airstrike,” Netanyahu told Trump and his team, according to three sources briefed on the discussion. As the bombing campaign stretches into its third week, Donald Trump faces a constitutional requirement, as he has called this bombardment “a war “.  The President should go to Congress and seek authorization for further action. More importantly, Trump should tell both the US House, the US Senate, and the American people just what the essential objective of the continued bombing campaign really is— because even his friends are wondering.
Erik Prince, one of the Trump’s closest supporters—and as President of Blackwater an expert on ground wars and their aftermath—said on the Steve Bannon podcast, “If there were a viable ground force that could seize and hold terrain and control terrain, then I guess air power and a decapitation strike makes more sense to me. But clacking off against the leadership and leaving a void right now — I’m concerned it’s going to result in a lot of chaos. Who knows what weapons the Iranians have stockpiled away that they’ll unleash on the region, or what they’ll do inside the United States now? It’s undoubtedly a bold move. I hope it was the president’s decision alone, and not because he was arm-twisted by supporters or billionaire donors. Why are we so worried about nuclear weapons not if we had these strikes last year that supposedly eliminated their nuclear program? Regimes get changed by removing the top management, but [also] having a viable replacements. I have yet to see there is a viable replacement anywhere that can sieze control of a significant empire. Ninety million people — intelligent, hardworking, technologically capable — is not easy to govern or flip overnight. Air power alone concerns me. And I’m concerned this is not our fight, that this is Israel’s fight that we got dragged into…And already three Americans dead, five seriously wounded. That’s troubling to me.”
Or to quote Trump’s ideological diametric opposite Bernie Sanders, “The United States is a powerful nation. We can overthrow any dictator… The point is not that we can overthrow the dictator, but what happens the next day?” There are alternatives to the current regime. Case in point, protesters on the streets of Iran have been flying the pre-Revolutionary royal flag and have called for Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi to return to power. Trump has refused to endorse the idea of son of the Shah’s restoration, even as a temporary measure to establish a functioning Democracy (as Pahlavi has promised). The US President has equally has refused to approve the previous Ayatollah’s son’s seizure of power.   Trump has ruled out every possible ruling alternative so far, only stating that he had to approve whomever the next leader of Iran might be. Moreover, will the CIA‘s arming of Kurdish separatists in northern Iran could spark a nationalist sectarian movement which would bring Turkish forces into conflict, since this new Kurdistan would stretch from Iran through Iraq into Syria and then almost 1/3 of Anatolia?
Interestingly, all of these are questions that are required to be answered under the 1973 War Powers Act.  President Trump possesses the legal the power to conduct combat operations for up to 90 days without the approval of Congress, but he is specifically required to outline the objectives and reasons for the conflict.  The urgency of bombing should have been explained by citing an existential danger. Simply starting on Feb 28 by bombing a meeting of mullahs is not enough to justify the NEXT three weeks of bombs. Were the Iranian about deploy fissionable materials?  Did they plan on a direct strike on US or allied targets?  Iran’s own willingness to bomb Arab neighboring countries does support the President’s case of the Islamic Republic posing an existential danger.  Still, Trump should emulate the example of President George W. Bush and go to Congress to seek authorization for the use of force.Simply saying, as Trump did last week, “No nukes, no terror” does not constitute an exit strategy after a full scale aerial that levels most of administrative and military assets of Iran.  Nor did Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s testimony to Congress last week make anything clearer. Rubio contended that the bombing should last no more than 4 to 5 weeks, but to what purpose?
And what of the Arab states oil export infrastructure—if the war continues?  Unable to reasonably attack US or Israeli forces, the Iranian military has chosen to launch Shahed-136 drone missiles at its Arab neighbors.   Each of these drones cost between $20,000 to $50,000.  They have been shot down—in most cases— by US Patriot missile systems purchased by the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia at a cost of million dollars for each missile. It takes two to three missiles launched from a Patriot Missile System to shoot down one Shahed-136 drone.  By the conclusion of this coming week, Arab Patriot missile stocks will be empty, and the United States has made no effort to replenish those Patriot interceptors. Very soon, Arab states will have no choice but to let Iranian drone missiles land where they will, and the Iranian regime will use that window of opportunity to target the energy infrastructure of the Persian Gulf.  That will trigger a cascade of energy prices worldwide— deducting 10,000,000 to 20,000,000 barrels of oil per day from the world petroleum supply.  Prices at the pump will skyrocket. Likewise, international maritime insurance underwriters have nullified all insurance coverage of any seabourne tanker which seeks to carry oil out of the Strait of Hormuz.  That puts the planetary economy teetering on the edge of a major energy crisis which makes the late 1970s look mild in comparison. What is the US plan to deal with that coming Int’l oil shock? No one knows?
On Tuesday, Senate Republicans voted down a congressional action to stop the war in Iran—47 to 53, with only Rand Paul voting with the Democrats and John Fetterman with the Republicans. However, the failure of an anti-war resolution does not constitute a pro-war vote. It’s time for the Trump administration to define the goals of the Iran war and— if they prove worthy enough— for Congress to ratify those objectives or demand the bombers fly home. Wait too long and the Pentagon may find that the missiles which got shot down by NATO air defenses—as they passed into Türkiye—may not be the last to target Turkish civilians. If Türkiye is attacked overwhelmingly in the coming weeks by Iranian drones, the Turks have the power to activate Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty.  A NATO declaration of war could trigger a Russian response, as Iran’s only ally, and World War III could lay over t